


Birth of the Drowned Boy

by GretchenSinister



Series: My Top 20 Short Gen Fics [6]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen, eldritch guardians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 06:09:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18114869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "So we all agree on that no matter how necessary it may have been, the stunt Man in the Moon pulled on Jack (losing his memories and being ignored for 300 years) was a pretty dick move on MiM’s part.However, it was pointed out to me that the moment Jack saves his sister and switches places with her, frost patterns start appearing on his coat from seemingly nowhere. So this gave me an idea:MiM never meant for Jack to die. He made Jack a guardian and gave him the forst powers the moment he saved his sister and intended for him to go on like the other guardians, just swithing lives: but he miscalculated. Likewise, the memory loss was not MiM’s fault, it’s just Jack’s own body shutting away the traumatic memory of drowning.+10 Pitch had something to do with it.+100 Jack and/or other guardians find out.(Alternatively, you could explore the “what if” situation if Jack hadn’t died that day, but was still made guardian. u3u)"This takes place in the Eldritch Abomination Verse but it’s pretty easy to read because I’m out of practice.Pitch is the first one present when Jack drowns.





	Birth of the Drowned Boy

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 9/10/2014.

New one.  
  
The shadow felt the new one where some of his darkness was, and he pulled himself closer together, from between the stars and under the trees and to the bottom of one small pond. The new one was all in one place above him, a little dense place with arms and legs–a body, the shadow remembered. Yes, a body. The shadow did not care to guess why the new one was being in a body like this. He had felt three other new ones created over the centuries, and all of them had been in bodies as well.  
  
He had asked the bright one about this, but even the bright one didn’t know why they had all been put in bodies, and  _he_  spoke with the new ones often enough that they thought he had one of his own. He and the bright one had tried out some bodies together to see if there was some advantage that they might have forgotten, being so old as they were. But the advantages they had found did not seem to be ones that the new ones availed themselves of very often.  
  
Still, the shadow assumed they were necessary somehow, as all of the other new ones had been very careful to keep their bodies going far longer than the usual sort he had seen. And this new one was feeling very afraid for their body right now, a sharp, refreshing taste, colder than the water the body floated in.  
  
It was nice, but the shadow knew that usually when there was that much fear for the body, something was going wrong with it. It searched the fear coming from the new one in the body, and found that bodies shaped like this one were never meant to be underwater, in such cold water, for so long.  
  
The shadow rippled in confusion. Why had this new one been given a body in such inopportune circumstances? Did the one who made new ones not understand about bodies? It was possible, he supposed. Bodies were tricky things.  
  
Was it assumed that this new one would be able to take care of his body like the others? It would have been a good guess, but this new one was so very very new that they did not seem to be aware of this. The shadow watched the new one in the body and puzzled over what to do.  
  
He watched and waited until the light outlining the body was dimmer, and the flavor of fear coming from the new one changed to a heavy tarlike dread.  
  
The shadow brushed against some of the openings of the body, and the water by all of them was so still that he determined that the body was no longer inhabitable, and this was why the new one was afraid. They were so new they had no idea such things were possible.  
  
The shadow thought about taking the new one out, but the new one was also very afraid of being without a body. The shadow curled up very densely to think some more.  
  
The new one needed a body. The new one needed a different body, but the new one didn’t know how to get one. The new one was very afraid of this, but as nice as it was, that couldn’t continue. The new one hadn’t been made for fear, that was clear enough. And the shadow didn’t want a new one associated with fear. He was quite enough in himself.  
  
The shadow decided he could make a copy of the uninhabitable body and put the new one in that. All the bodies he had made so far were inhabitable.  
  
***  
  
The copy was not exact, but the shadow was proud of himself. Perhaps he had made the skin too pale, and perhaps the hair was only meant to be that color under moonlight, but surely that wouldn’t bother the new one. They could always change it. Anyway, this body was more durable. The shadow pushed it through the ice above the water with no trouble.  
  
When the new one used the body to take a breath, the shadow felt their fear slip away, which was, by this point, a relief. When he had moved the new one out from the uninhabitable body, they had been so afraid it had been impossible for the shadow to concentrate on the fine details of the copy.  
  
He had lost some of the minutia of the brain cells, but, well, maybe that would be all right. The minutia had seemed like signs of aging, anyway, and the new ones didn’t always like that.  
  
The body blinked, and the shadow relaxed, dispersing once again.

**Author's Note:**

> My tags from Tumblr: #to be clear: Pitch accidentally got rid of the physcial changes that represented complex memories #because gosh neurons are so fiddly anyway #and the being can't even remember his own ear-holes
> 
> Comments from Tumblr:
> 
> tejoxys said: Oh, I like this. So benevolent in such an uncomprehending way.
> 
> bowlingforgerbils said: oooh I like it. I like helpful eldritch abominations who don’t quite know what they’re doing.


End file.
